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Intel announced yesterday that the introduction of its next-generation chips, codenamed Broadwell, will be delayed. The company demoed the 14nm processors at IDF last month, and claims that the new chip can cut power consumption a further 30% below the reductions we saw with Haswell thanks to the move to 14nm process technology, down from 22nm. Broadwell is also set to be significantly smaller than Haswell — small enough to fit into tablets and form factors without requiring a fan, and supposedly incorporating a GPU that pushes performance up a further 40% over the current generation.

During its Q3 conference call, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich noted that the issues facing Broadwell are technical (as opposed to marketing related), saying “It was simply a defect density issue.” The chip will begin production in the first quarter of the year. Intel claims that it’s “comfortable” with yields, but is still baking in fixes and changes to the core to better improve its standing. This is unsurprising — but what Intel dismisses as “just a defect density” issue is, in fact, profoundly at the heart of the problems facing modern semiconductor manufacturing.

How defect densities wreck cost curves

As semiconductor nodes shrink, the difficulty of building ever-smaller transistor layouts becomes increasingly acute. The shift to double-patterning can increase defect densities on its own, the fundamental limitations of 192nm lithography are a constant pressure, and the need to ensure ever-higher levels of control over dopant distribution and voltage characteristics are slamming up against the fundamental limits of physical laws. Defect density is a metric that refers to how many defects are likely to be present per wafer of CPUs.

It’s important to understand that defects aren’t binary. Chips don’t just work or not work. A chip may work perfectly but consume more power than intended. Imperfect dopant distribution or nanometer-size errors in transistor placement can cause issues related to frequency scaling. The problem with low-power, low-cost cores is that the manufacturer needs to tightly control both binary work/don’t work defects and smaller problems that don’t destroy the processor, but prevent it from hitting power targets.

One way of lowering the impact of defects is to build redundant circuit paths within the processor itself. All manufacturers build in a degree of redundancy, but when manufacturing tolerances are being tightly squeezed, adding redundant circuits also pushes up complexity. A balance must be carefully struck to ensure that the evaluation and duplicate structures don’t end up exacerbating the problem.

Consider the impact of defects that cumulatively increase CPU TDP by 50%. A 50W-75W desktop chip now has a TDP of 75W-112W — well within the cooling capabilities of a modern tower. A 17W laptop chip at +50% TDP can fit into any chassis capable of handling a 25W TDP. But a tablet chip, already borderline at 5W, may be pushed out of the space altogether if it hits the 7.5W mark. With Intel fighting hard to shake the perception of x86 chips as too power-hungry to fit into ARM-competitive form factors, it’s imperative that each generation of x86 processor deliver dividends on this front, even if it costs top-end performance, as it did with Haswell.

All the goals make sense, but the chips have to be yielding optimally to drop them into place.

Expect similar announcements in years to come

Intel’s troubles in this area should be considered a bellwether for the industry. It’s not that companies will stop advancing, but that the rate of next-generation ramps is going to slow as manufacturers struggle to ramp products through an increasingly uncooperative chain. From extreme ultraviolet lithography to the 450mm wafer transition, some of the best engineers on the planet are trying to build equipment that can continue scaling, even as the cost per square millimeter of silicon increases at 20nm for the first time, ever.

With GlobalFoundries and TSMC still ramping 20nm, Intel’s 14nm delay shouldn’t impact the company’s roadmaps or the lead its opened up over its competitors. TSMC is working to ramp 20nm and 16nm FinFETs simultaneously, with the former debuting in 2014 and the latter launching in the 2016 time frame. GlobalFoundries, Samsung, and IBM are pushing ahead with plans for a hybrid 14-20nm process, in which chips would marry 14nm front-end manufacturing with 20nm interconnects. The result (if it works), would be a chip with 14nm-style power consumption and performance, but 20nm size.

GlobalFoundries hasn’t issued firm guidance on when it expects to start ramping 20nm, but 2014 is the generally accepted date, with the 14nm technology coming along 1-2 years thereafter as well. In both cases, slowdowns and delays could impact customers or the foundries themselves — not because of any inherent flaw, but because the scaling has become so difficult. Moore’s law’s long-term prognosis may be gloomy, but there are still options for boosting enthusiast performance.

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I agree, things are really slowing down at the moment. I’m still holding out for a breakthrough, there seems to be a few possibilities!

Ry

Err, 8 or 6 core Haswell E series perhaps?

VirtualMark

Adding more cores isn’t a breakthrough, and it’ll only increase performance for a limited amount of programs.

Ry

It’s a CPU.. what sort of breakthrough you want?
You either get performance and or power efficiency, my guess you’d be after power. So adding twice the CPU performance of your current system isn’t a breakthrough? What is?
Integrated EDRAM is coming most likely on all high end processors.. It may be slowing down as such

but the performance is there if you want to pay for it.
The Breakthrough you’re after is quantum computing.. feel free to wait that one out. Personally I can’t wait to get me a couple of 4770R Haswell NUCs. You really just have to undestand the market here and choose the best solution for yourself rather than comment on something you can do nothing about. This is how it’s playing out, efficiency first and foremost.

VirtualMark

Clearly you don’t understand computing – doubling the cores does not double the computing power. In certain cases you can get almost double, but for some software there is little improvement. Imagine a horse and cart – if you double the horses would it double speed? Would 10 horses go 10x faster?

I’d suggest reading some of the articles on this site, there are a few possibilities for future materials that may allow CPU speeds to scale past 20Ghz. This is what I want, faster speeds and better single thread performance.

The “fast enough” is bullshit, fast enough for who? Not me. It’s only because there hasn’t been an increase in CPU speed that people are saying that. If a 20Ghz CPUs came out tomorrow, we’d be able to do all sorts of things and there would be new software that would take advantage of the new power. Then 3Ghz computers would seem too slow.

Ry

Yeah.. I’m not replying to you anymore, you don’t get it.

VirtualMark

Hilarious!

Aberran Fox

I am sorry you have to put up with people like Ry. Maybe in the future we will have idiot filters.

VirtualMark

An idiot filter would be awesome, as there appears to be a relentless army of them.

Gmax Mo bay

Haswell was for laptops, there hasn’t been a real CPU upgrade since Sandybridge.

Levi Morrison

For applications that can utilize FMA instructions there is a pretty good performance gain for desktops/servers as well. It’s not as big nor universal as was the Sandybridge upgrade, but it’s worth noting that markets other than laptops also benefit.

Ry

I’d consider 10%+ and good power savings a worthwhile upgrade, plus there’s the graphics performance which has increased considerably. For this reason I’m upgrading a 2600K to a 4770R.
You say this won’t be an upgrade? Actually It’s going to be quite significant..

Ry

I’d consider 10%+ and good power savings a worthwhile upgrade, plus there’s the graphics performance which has increased considerably. For this reason I’m upgrading a 2600K to a 4770R.
You say this won’t be an upgrade? Actually It’s going to be quite significant.

Ry

Yeah we hoped for more, but oh well. At least there’s 8 cores coming. Plus there’s the i7 4790/4771, maybe you’re not looking up the line high enough. Have to spend a bit more to get that performance now.

Fraser

Intel: Hey guys we’ve managed to reduce power consumption by 15W so while you are rendering, encoding or gaming you’ll be glad to know you won’t be killing the planet in the process; bye for another year.

Gmax Mo bay

I get the concept that hipsters need more hours out of their macbook airs but I have a monster Rig in my mancave that eats macbooks for breakfast and shits iPads so screw minimal power consumption. I want Muscle for my games because I overclock like a mofo and I run nothing less than a 900W power supply but I cant afford an E i7-CPU! I want a true successor to the 2600K that runs 5Ghz out of the box, a real no non-sense zero compromise monster that screams UNLIMITED POOWWWEEERRRRR!!!!!

Philip van der Linde

The Hasswel-E processors will arrive soon they will pack a lot of punch.

Ry

Someone with some common sense.

pelov lov

There were rumblings about issues at the 14nm node dating back to last year:

Whether these are new issues or perhaps the same issues popping up again, only Intel knows.

Intel should be shaking in their boots right now. A quarter setback might not seem like much, and perhaps it isn’t, but we’re already seeing chips and processes on “far distant” nodes from “second-rate” fabs that are beating Intel’s products in performance. Hell, Apple’s A7 is closer to Haswell in IPC than it is to Bay Trail.

“On the other hand, Intel’s new Bay Trail Atom Z3770 chip faces stiff competition from a 28 nm Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930) produced chip — the A7 processor Apple, Inc. (AAPL) uses in its new iPhone 5S. The performance of the A7 shows that while process provides some advantages power and processing wise, those advantages may increasingly be unable to overcome the inherent architectural baggage that x86 brings to the table.

Samsung’s process is 28nm LP (Gate-First high-κ metal gate (HKMG)), while Intel’s 22 nm process is Gate-Last HMKG. This is a huge win for Samsung as it means that it’s producing a better chip on a cheaper mature process — the best possible scenario. By contrast, Intel’s still fresh 22 nm is not only slower — it also costs Intel more to produce.”

And what’s worse is that Samsung’s 28nm-LP HKMG isn’t the densest nor the best performing of the available 28nm processes. Apple chose them because they wouldn’t have to port over, and because Samsung had favorable prices/excess capacity.

Joel Hruska

You’re quoting two entirely different reasons for the delay and conflating them. Apologies for not getting back to you on this sooner.

The 14nm rollout was a delay because Intel chose to slow its *factory* ramp. That’s entirely different from delaying due to process node tweaks.

As for IPC on Haswell vs. BT vs. A7, I have yet to see the apples-to-apples comparison on that. Certainly the A7 is a very good core.

Arif Mubarak

“…GlobalFoundries hasn’t issued firm guidance on when it expects to start ramping 20nm…” ..because GF does not know itself if it can actually deliver a 20nm CMOS platform..in my humble opinion, GF may sustain losses exceeding $ 0.5-0.7 Billion for 2013 with the prospects for 2014 even worse – upwards of $ 2 B – thanks to
(1) a failing 20nm CMOS Logic platform from GF – well over a year behind competitor TSMC
(2) strategically blundering decisions by its leadership (that has a demonstrated history of having run other semiconductor industry members such as Freescale, AMD into the ground) and
(3) gaping holes in expertise necessary in key areas in 20nm Technology Development – OPC, devices, SRAM etc..

Indeed, GF is shaping up to become quite a massive wealth destruction machine for the unwary sheikhs from Abu Dhabi… NY State might be better off with the new building at GF in Malta NY being used as a University such as CNSE instead..

Joel Hruska

Citation needed on this, at multiple points.

Arif Mubarak

“…GlobalFoundries hasn’t issued firm guidance on when it expects to start ramping 20nm…” ..because GF does not know itself if it can actually deliver a 20nm CMOS platform..in my humble opinion, GF may sustain losses exceeding $ 0.5-0.7 Billion for 2013 with the prospects for 2014 even worse – upwards of $ 2 B – thanks to
(1) a failing 20nm CMOS Logic platform from GF – well over a year behind competitor TSMC
(2) strategically blundering decisions by its leadership (that has a demonstrated history of having run other semiconductor industry members such as Freescale, AMD into the ground) and
(3) gaping holes in expertise necessary in key areas in 20nm Technology Development – OPC, devices, SRAM etc..

Indeed, GF is shaping up to become quite a massive wealth destruction machine for the unwary sheikhs from Abu Dhabi… NY State might be better off with the new building at GF in Malta NY being used as a University such as CNSE instead..

Angel Ham

Does this means that for Broadwell we’re gonna get six i3 chips, sixteen i5 variants and a dozen i7 models? Not to mention about thirty different flavours of Broadwell Celeron/Pentium chips..

Joel Detrow

They’re delaying release specifically because doing what you’re talking about would be foolhardy.

Angel Ham

Haswell disagrees with you. There’s seven i7s, thirteen i5s, six i3s, and six Pentium chips; and that’s just the Desktop processors.

On the Mobile side.. There’s like eighteen i7s, six i5s, four i3s, three Pentiums, three Celerons, and a partridge in a pear treeeeee.

Joel Detrow

Okay, then.

Macy Jones

With this new generation chip that Intel has introduced the things have become very slow and there are a number of issues related to it. It is as similar as the new update given by the Apple. It was given for the benefit of the people but there arises countless issues. Hoping to get some good possibilities in future. http://www.appxperts.com.au/

Saby

Great article Joel
Just one comment on the timeframes you mentioned. TSMC and the GF/Samsung/IBM alliance are planning to introduce 16/14nm in 2015, 1 year after the 20nm. The reason for that is they will be using the same back end of the line as the 20nm but move the front end to 3D 16/14nm node. Point to note is that all of them, including Intel, will be doing double patterning for the first time in 2014. Intel will also be reducing its metal pitch width which the foundries aren’t going to – they are already on 64nm whereas Intel is coming from 80nm to 56nm. So, the strategy of the foundries has been to do one step at a time – double patterning in 2014, finfet in 2015 keeping the metal pitch constant whereas Intel has tried to do a lot for its 14nm node – both a reduction of metal pitch width as well as double patterning, having cracked the finfet problem in 22nm.
Hence, the problems Intel faces in its 14nm node, I think. No doubt, they will crack that too, but it will take a little longer than they expected!

Joel Hruska

My comments on TSMC’s output are based on Morris Chang’s own statements to investors. He says 16nm FinFET volume is “very small” in 2015, with 2016 for volume ramp.

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Andreas

Wasn’t Broadwell always supposed to come out in 2014?

Andreas

Wasn’t Broadwell always supposed to come out in 2014?

Ry

It still will, but not sure about the performance parts, will be end of 2014 or early 2015.

Billy Gate

In a few years, their main lineup of i7s i5s i3s will all fit in tablets. Amazing. RIP ARM.

BtotheT

Well yeah isn’t an i5 already set for the Surface pro 2 in Aug? I wouldn’t rule out the ability of the tegra 5 too hastily though. Every release they top the gpu market which is often a bottleneck over cpu processing anymore. I’d like intel to run the server market starting with avaton and following a 14nm broadwell sucess bleed into cellphone SoCs. It’s nice the eMMcs made a jump to keep up. The fluency is really becoming flawless anymore.

wat

Nah. By the time they get down to ARM power efficiency they will have raped their clock speed (I know clock speed isn’t everything etc) down to like 1.5ghz where ARM will be on 3GHz+ and all too happy to give you 8 cores where future i7s will only be 4 if you’re lucky.

Guest

aaaaaa

Chad Frank

I would hope the PCB’s will be soldered to the IHS with the new broadwells

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